What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[Beast96GT]

You guys have to forgive me if these questions have been answered elsewhere or stomp on our sacred Amiga heritage.  I've spent the past few days reading (and bad YouTube videos) about nothing but tragedy with the Amiga.  

(I'm a person who knows nothing about the Amiga after the A3000)

If a new Amiga was produced:

1) What would be special about it?  What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?  

2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?

3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?

[darksun9210]

hey there, hello from dull overcast london  :-D

1. special? well, thats pretty dependant on each person i guess, but really for me its half sentimentality, and half learning from a time when computers were interesting/fun.

its going to be much easier to develop hobbie software/hardware for a standard platform thats as accessable/inaccessable as the amiga. like expanding an A600, if it wasn't difficult, there would be no interest. :-)

if you can use it for day to day computing instead of a PC, then good on you, :-) and all power to your elbow etc, but really, i find a reasonable PC running UAE can be an  invaluable tool in keeping amigas alive. be it for backup purposes, transfering data, acting as a data server over the network.
for example,
lots of people are starting to get into using compact flash cards as hard disks. a USB to IDE adapter, and a CF to IDE socket thing, and you can backup, copy, create amiga partitons and data really quickly on the PC and then plug the card into the CF adapter on the miggy and off you go. saves mucking about with floppys.
i wouldn't buy a miggy without a PC to "help out" these days.

2. amiga needs to dev some totaly mental hardware with some venture capitalists money and blow everyones socks off again. something like the Tile64 processor with a completely radical architechture. but able to scale from games machines a-la A500, to highend A2/4000.
trouble is, we live in different times these days. there isn't the room for something new and different. even a mac is just an intel PC with a pretty skin. x86 pretty much rules all. and anything that isn't x86 these days scares off both venture capitalists, customers, and consumers, as "it is not compatable".
People aren't willing to be as savey anymore. a computer isn't a thing to investigate and learn about, its a consumer item. its for removing the red eye out of wedding photos, running iTunes, and surfing for pr0n. most people don't want to know how, or why, they just want to do what they are told it can do in magazines.
There is no room for any "upstart" in the market anymore. no more atari's, no more sinclair spectrum's, no more amstrads, and no more amiga's...
the only shot i can see, is amiga OS4.x being recompiled for cheap comodity x86 hardware, and someone developing a "killer app/game" for it, to make everyone want it.

3. market leader? wintel PC? well, your A2000 can use the Deneb Zorro2/3 USB2 card. this will allow such crazy things as USB Lan ethernet, USB sound cards, USB hard drives and CD/DVD optical drives. not to mention Keyboards and mice. if i had a zorro capable machine, i would look to invest in one of these...
also, you may look to getting a CV64/3D or Piccaso4 as this will put a 64bit GFX card in your A2000. ok its only got 4Meg ram, but compared to OCS/ECS/AGA its a dream.
another idea is a more heavyweight accelerator card. something with an 040 or 060. an 060 is roughly equivilent to a pentium1, but without the windows overhead :-)
if i recall correctly, the inferno accelerator for the A2000 had an 060 on it, along with scsi, network port, upto 128Mb ram, and a custom PCI slot designed for the wildfire graphics card. the wildfire being one of the fastest amiga graphics cards ever designed...
but mostly, you'll probably find GVP techmagic's, or Blizzard20x0's - both very good cards in their own right.

most amiga's have all kinds of hardware solutions. just what kind of solution do you need? :-)


sorry for the length of post... i'm bored this morning. its friday and its payday, so everyone just wants to do as little as possible and go home :lol:

[cicero790]

Yes darksun9210
I totally agree with you post 2 statement. Since Mac have moved to cheap Intel chips, why not also Amiga. A new Amiga should at least be 64 bit multi core. No lack of power any more, but Amiga should not only be a fast PC like Mac, cutting edge today is different. How about a built in FPGA board? Give Amiga programs the possibility to reprogram part of its hardware??  The hardware experts here probably have ideas on what would be cutting edge today. Hardware for CUDA??
Main point is, a new Amiga should level with Mac and PC and then go beyond them in how it utilizes present day technology that is true Amiga, being the best, yet again.
If we do this, we both have the cake and eat it, meaning; the joy of vintage, emulation and vintage advancement(Natami,c-clone), is still there. Nothing of the interesting projects will die, they will live side by side with a modern battle cruiser Amiga.  :-)

There could be a great advantage for the lack of new models in the recent years, no burden of backward compatibility, just the latest technology, put together in a smarter way.

[downix]

I'd strongly disagree on going Intel for the same reasons I gave against PowerPC: Vendor Lock-in.  Intel you're tied to Intel, period, the end.  Intel doesn't support your efforts, too bad.  

I would instead look to one of the licenseable architectures, whereby if a vendor does not deliver, well, you control your own destiny and can change fabs, vandors, etc with minimal issues.  ARM, MIPS and SPARC all qualify.  ARM is expensive to license, but quite popular.  MIPS is less expensive to license, and with the new Chinese Loongson CPU's shipping are making a strong comeback.  SPARC tho, least expensive to license, and with the strongest reputation among them all.  Hell, I made a SPARC based mp3 player for myself a few years back.  Tried to do that with Intel anytime lately?  

What would the Amiga offer?  Look at the newest trends in computing, for lighter weight, faster operating machines weither they have the CPU power or not.  Netbooks, tablets, e-books, cell phones, that is the target for a new Amiga.  The Amiga's instant-on capability, ideal for this market.  Desktops and workstations would be mainly for support of the real market, the portables.  That would be my ideal.  

So, what would I do?  Make a SPARC based System on Chip for the netbooks, with a HT bus for expanding into a full fledged desktop and workstation CPU.  PowerPC is a dead end.  ARM and MIPS are too expensive.  Intel is proprietory.  AMD is not mobile.  VIA cannot handle the desktop.

I have plans for a MiniMig based PDA, to demonstrate this.  Plans I likely will never finish because I don't think anyone here cares about playing to the Amiga's strengths, only in focusing on some pipe dream.  There is nothing stopping us from reaching our dream of a new Amiga save ourselves.

[cicero790]

I understand what you saying downix.

Amiga should today be a so powerful platform that it was possible to port Masseffect, Crysis or Bioshock with ease and run all modern music and graphic software, That is how you compete with the best. If this could be accomplished in your way without Intel I’m all for it. But as you say Amiga should also be PDA’s.

Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different? Amiga is a powerful brand name not some small orphan OS that never had a platform of its own. I was forced to leave Amiga in the 90’s because the stopped development of hardware. I loved my A1200.
Millions upon millions of people were like me, force to leave a platform we liked for PC or Mac.
If the right decisions are made Amiga can again be a force to be reckoned with.
The Amiga strength should be all over the playing field from super desktop to PDA. Don’t stop your PDA project, All Amiga is needed.
Dreams are necessary to shape reality. I would love to see this PDA project come to life.

[Piru]

Reality check



...failed.

[alexh]

Beast96GT wrote:
If a new Amiga was produced:

1) What would be special about it?  What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?  

It would be integrated into the head-rests of cars.

Beast96GT wrote:
2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?

Dunno about you, but I certainly do not remember the Amiga as "inexpensive".

A Batman Pack which cost £399 in 1989 would cost in today's money (adjusting for inflation) £734.16. That is hardly inexpensive is it?

Beast96GT wrote:
3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?

Emulation.

[cicero790]

Piru wrote:
Reality check



...failed.

@Piru

Do you know what vision is?
It is something that you force upon reality by strength of will. If the will fail, the intention fails.

Do you know what reality is?
It is something that is true from a certain  point of view at a certain time. it is no categorical imperative.

Tell me about the impossibility to create a highly innovative motherboard with Intel's chips and stamp the Amiga logo on it??

exactly what part of that process is incomprehensible?



 :-)

[darksun9210]

@downix
i hear what you are saying, i really do, personally i see x86 as a backwards step. but its the way i see as a "quick to market" idea of hardware to maybe start selling stuff and generating revenue for futher development...
that sparc mp3 player sounds wicked, and i love the idea of a PDA minimig.
i was thinking of something along the lines of a netbook laptop but based on a minimig myself...

anyway,

64bit? multi core? pffft. so what. non of this will matter.
multi core is still lining up serial processors to try to do a parallel job. hyperthreading is a cheap way of extending this by assigning unused execution units to virutal processors in an attempt to have more threads running concurrently on a single core. providing your software is threaded.

waste. of. time.

i was looking at this stuff from Tilera.com the otherday. really interesting idea. bit of a rework, and you have a chip that could be an order of magnitude over what we have today, and blow intel's vapour laughabee out of the water before it even sails. all from one chip. and to quote power disipation, 700Mhz at 22W. ok 700mhz sounds pretty poor. but this looks like an achitecture shift. true single cycle multiprocessing (MIMD).

main problem is, to bring to market something like what the amiga was then, in todays environemt... would cost billions. intel/nvidia/amd pump billions into R&D every year. hows a startup gonna keep up?

innovation is dead and buried in the mainstream - as displayed by "bigger/faster/shiney" so called advances. it's just not profitable to deviate to far from what mass consumers are comfortable with.
so now, it's down to people that are interested and know about alternatives, to bring this forward. in little steps.
like downix's minimig PDA and sparc mp3 player  :bow:

the way i see it, unless hyperion win the lottery, its down to us basicly... and as far as mainstream business is concerned, the amiga name seems to be about as attractive as the number 13. :lol:

[zylesea]

The issue of going x86 was discussed a zillion times already. the prob is the endianess. either you lose binary compatibilty (like AROS) or you lose cpu cycles (needed to continously swap endianess) - which wouldn't comply with the 'elegance through simplicity' approach.
Anyway, for x86 there's AROS.  

[darksun9210]

@3Ghz, what's a few cycles between friends? :-D

[cicero790]

@darksun9210

Perhaps there are other ways and your way could be possible but if the platform lacks the power to run the best games and apps there will be starting problems. If on the other hand this is possible then the door is open to the market and the wheels are tuning with new models.

A modern Amiga must have the force to be able to run the best games and apps, and this must be accomplished in cheapest possible way in a do able fashion. And that is possible.

@zylesea

The machine we are talking about here should not have a backward compatible anchor to drag. Mac left there original design. It should be like the original Amiga cutting edge in this age and possible to manufacture in the present now.  

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:

Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?

This was one of the few things AInc did hit right on the head, make the CPU irrelevent to the equasion by simply emulating it from the get-go.  Their issue was that they began re-inventing the horse, new OS.  If they'd taken Tao's system and simply ported the AmigaOS to it, who knows what could have been accomplished.  Add in a fast emulation for the classic hardware, and then we'd be talking a solid, powerful and flexible platform that would scale down or up as needed with a solid knowledge base.  Heck, could still do this with an optimized 68k emulation system, as shown with Amithlon.  Then wouldn't matter what CPU you ran on, would it?

But AInc's focus on a CPU agnostic system that only runs on one CPU and with little legacy support... just not worth it to me.  

[darksun9210]

Ahmen

[cicero790]

downix wrote:

cicero790 wrote:

Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?

This was one of the few things AInc did hit right on the head, make the CPU irrelevent to the equasion by simply emulating it from the get-go.  Their issue was that they began re-inventing the horse, new OS.  If they'd taken Tao's system and simply ported the AmigaOS to it, who knows what could have been accomplished.  Add in a fast emulation for the classic hardware, and then we'd be talking a solid, powerful and flexible platform that would scale down or up as needed with a solid knowledge base.  Heck, could still do this with an optimized 68k emulation system, as shown with Amithlon.  Then wouldn't matter what CPU you ran on, would it?

But AInc's focus on a CPU agnostic system that only runs on one CPU and with little legacy support... just not worth it to me.  

There have been many mistakes, so many that the chance of getting it right have increased exponentially it seems.

I just have a feeling that there will be a hole in one next time, that there will be new Amiga's with enough power to match PC and MAC. How these are done with Intel or in a another fashion I do not care. I just want a new super Amiga and a PDA Amiga.   :-)